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Who counts as human, and why? How do race, gender, sexuality, class, and other vectors of difference and belonging demarcate the question of being human? Who gets marked as disposable, and why? How has our definition of being human changed over time, and how does technology amplify this question? In this class, we will unpack the unique perspectives that literary works (novels, poems, plays, and short stories) offer on one of the most central questions of our time. We will read a selection of literary works from the past and the contemporary and attend to how texts refract existing ways of thinking, being, and feeling, as well as imagine new ones. Throughout, we will pay special attention to how literature can deepen, complicate, and enrich existing vocabularies for thinking about humanity and being human.

Texts will include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Alex Garland’s film Ex-Machina (2014), Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild and Other Stories, “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti, Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, and poems by Solmaz Sharif, Mahmoud Darwish, Elizabeth Bishop, and others.